Monthly Archives: July 2014

Emptiness can be very full, a blank canvas stretching out within the core of the soul’s journey that can seem terribly bleak if your view of the world tells you that you must always ‘know’ and understand every little thing. But if you are prepared to be a child again and get excited about the unknown then that clear space of nothing is full of raw potential that is simply waiting for your focus to become something wonderful!

I have been feeling a bit anxious about various aspects of my life even as I revel in my deeply satisfying relationship, old habits die hard they say and the mind tends to go looking for justification for its sometimes rather strange notions. I sat in a medicine circle not so long ago and one of the messages coming through loud and clear was that I am living an amazing and ecstatic life right here and now.

And it isn’t hard to see life that way if I am prepared to truly go out on a limb and ignore all the messages from the everyday world that say you have to be in a regular job and fit in to society’s way of thinking. I don’t work nine to five and instead of renting or living in my own home I do house sitting, it means I can live in places that my current income would never be able to support. In the modern world status is gathered by the material things we accumulate, if you were to judge me by those standards then you’d have to say that I am an utter, utter failure.

Luckily I don’t see it that way, and when my mind encounters early programming that tells me I’m not good enough it doesn’t take too long to realise what’s going on. So much of what we’ve been told about the world is based on narrow views of reality that leave out all the best bits, like spirituality and love, community and compassion. Time to do what Terence McKenna recommends and to “tell society to fuck off!”

A few posts ago I wrote about the theme of inner balance, my thoughts inspired by the Joining Gathering, it was about loving self and thus becoming more open to other kinds of love. (Inner Balance: A Meditation On Joining). Well once you have moved into a more mature way of relating, the place where you are yourself and so are they, you love it all and you see this amazing beauty in another soul. There’s a poem I hear sometimes in medicine circles that says something like, I love you in all your exquisite flaws, and that’s how it is when you connect on a deep level.

A key element in this kind of relationship is clear communication, and that isn’t just about words, we use feelings to communicate, and don’t forget body language too. If there is something going on inside you that doesn’t feel good, don’t be afraid to name it and own it, even though your head may know that it isn’t true, your feelings will keep telling you that things are not right. Sometimes simply voicing something can be enough to shift whatever energetic charge is being triggered, and that can be sound without words, for example toning.

My Beloved and I had been through an overnight ceremony and were taking it easy at home as we recovered from a wonderful but also quite intense experience. At some point in the late afternoon the mood shifted, we were both tired but my Beloved was deeply tired and he began to withdraw into himself. I could feel a difference in him but I was tired and we went through this time of me wanting to talk even though there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm in the response. Basically we both had a lot of stuff going on and I as a woman wanted to talk and he as a man wanted to go into his cave and do whatever it is that men do in there!

In the end I began to feel cut off from my lover and an energy in my heart was triggered and the specific feeling was disappointment, it felt horrible and I didn’t feel like I could sleep. My beloved was exhausted as well as withdrawn and when I told him what I could feel he really didn’t have the energy to deal with it. I eventually got out of bed and went and built up the fire, watching a fire burn is rather therapeutic, then curled up in front of the fire and fell asleep there.

The next morning my dear one came out with surprise wondering where on earth I was, we went back to bed and talked about what had been going on for each of us the previous evening. We took responsibility for our own stuff, I knew perfectly well the feelings in my body came from some other time before we’d even met. And he realised that he would probably have been better off just going off on his own, or even to bed much earlier. We do practice clear communication most of the time but we are also human and the last time I looked I wasn’t perfect!

I was really inspired last year when I saw Sugata Mitra give a Ted talk on his vision for the future of education, so for those of you who missed it here it is again. I’ve added some photos so this new improved version looks much better than the original although the wonderful message remains no matter how you dress it up.

Time to take a break from my intense inner journeys and to go on a magical tour to the future, in this particular instance, the future of education. Like many other areas of knowledge in our society, medicine, the production of energy, education is well and truly behind what is known about the capacity of human beings. In fact Sugata Mitra says that schools as we know them are obsolete, they are no longer preparing children for the world that they will actually go out and meet.

He traces the origins of our current system, which came from the British Empire, and which aimed to create a workforce of identical drones who would be able to run the bureaucratic machine that they used to keep their empire together and running efficiently. It was also a world where people might have to be able to do their jobs, for example soldiers, under enormous threat, and so they received punishment and did examinations where they would come up with the answers under adverse conditions. But in that situation the brain shuts down the learning centres, by shifting the emphasis to encouragement, that is pleasure, much more learning can occur.

Sugata Mitra advocates children teaching each other and he has done numerous experiments that clearly show that this can produce amazing results, give the kids big questions, broadband, and a Granny figure to offer encouragement, and there seems to be no limit to what can be achieved! He postulates the challenging notion that knowing may also be obsolete, as we can often now find out things at the touch of a keypad, and find out whatever we need to know in a matter of minutes.

This is such exciting and inspiring information, no wonder the current empires represented by the big corporations such as the fossil fuel and pharmacological industries, are trying so hard to hang on to what they have. They understand that they are only just managing to keep a lid on human potential, and that sooner or later the lid is going to pop off and their stranglehold on our culture will be over. One could wish they would give in gracefully, but it doesn’t seem likely at the moment.

Perhaps one of the new generation of children who are learning at the School in the Cloud, will work out how to dismantle the whole sorry mess without creating a lot of misery and suffering for the population. When you have watched this talk by Sugata Mitra you will understand why I am so hopeful, the examples that he gives are literally mind-boggling, I cried, in a good way!

“Schools as we know them are obsolete” says Sugata Mitra, an educational researcher and the winner of the 2013 TED Prize.
His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another.
This presentation turns our idea of education on its head. See his revolutionary pedagogical method in action here, where learning happens “by itself”:

Once again I am going back to the past, this time over a year ago to a post I wrote about triggers on February 28 2013, it was a turbulent year in terms of stuff coming up and it helped me to grow and evolve very quickly indeed. The particular trigger who was in my thoughts when I wrote this turned out to be highly manipulative and knew exactly what he was doing, in spite of that I bless him for all the deep trauma he helped me to uncover and to let go of, allowing me to become the happy and fulfilled person I am today! The title was “Point Your Trigger To My Heart”, particularly catchy I thought but only one photo in the whole post so I have added a few, nice to see how I’ve evolved over time.

I’d like to have a bit of a yarn about triggers, not the kind that help you to blow your brains out when attached to a gun, the ones that help you get your stuff moving. They tend to be the people you care about, or hate, the ones that annoy you on a regular basis, and of course when desire is involved stuff tends to come flying up from every which way!

The important thing to remember about triggers, is that most of the time the reaction you are experiencing is way out of proportion to what has actually occurred. In fact a lot of the time they have nothing to do with the feelings that are coursing through you, but the temptation to point the finger of blame and to project is very powerful. Not only are you dumping on an innocent, you are missing out on the opportunity to take responsiblity for your own feelings and let go of old patterns that are no longer serving you.

I’m the first to admit that I tend to go a bit unconscious when something nasty is moving through, but it doesn’t take me too long these days to realise what’s going on. If the situation seems to show my unwitting trigger in a bad light, I immediately cease any and all speculation about what was actually going on. After all, if it’s my own stuff coming up, then it’s inside my inner world that I will find any answers. And once I understand what my feelings are connected to, the situation that set it all off generally makes a great deal of sense, and I offer a prayer of gratitude and blessings to the one who has helped me into this space of greater clarity.

Now I’m not excusing bad behaviour here, if someone is rude or unkind or unfair, you have every right to respond in an appropriate fashion. There are people who have to be separated from the rest of the community because they are dangerous. But as Kabir said, “Do what you do with another human being, but never put them out of your heart.” When you harden your heart against another, you hurt yourself as much as the other person, choose to be in your loving heart and you have instant protection. And the response you make is much more likely to be non-judgemental and appropriate to the situation.

Wherever I ramble it is always my heart that I come back to, in that still space full of love and acceptance, I feel welcomed and held. In these uncertain times when our inner beings are being flung around in the storms within, the heart is our safe refuge, the port that I call home.

Here is a post that I wrote on December 4 last year, I was scrolling back through when this one caught my eye and at the risk of being a bit mushy, I smiled at what I wrote just days after my Beloved and I came together for the first time. So here it is from the perspective of almost eight months later and it keeps getting better and that kundalini energy is still surging with plenty of zest! Looking forward to seeing my darling tomorrow night after four days apart!

Energy rises through the column of space and time that is me in this particular place known as planet Earth, it coils with sensuous grace as my kundalini bursts forth, the final shackles thrown away as I dance out of prison into the light. Luscious thoughts snaking through a mind that cannot seem to hold on to a worry or a doubt, letting the fresh breeze of my new beginning blow away anything that will not serve in this Golden New Age of love and prosperity.

Heart opens and opens, sending a delicious thrill to the nipples who are singing a song of creativity and flow, of surrender to the force of life and a spiral upwards into the pure space of inspiration. Tender distraction tugs at a mind doing its best to stay focused on the everyday, luring my thoughts into memory of touch and sound, of vibrating cells and a magical time out of time, a place you never really want to leave. So the trick then is to somehow stay there even as life pulls you into its stream, bringing with you the sense of joy and discovery, of playfulness and love.

Time to merge everything into the wholeness that is where it all began, a circle that circles within a circle, drawing our spirits into the centre of the heart, the place where transformation is a daily event. That fire will purify even the darkest of thoughts and actions and give wings to the angels who have lost their way, halos knocked askew as they go searching for the meaning to an ever-changing life. Fly with good intention and the winds of desire will always lift you up into a place where you will see the whole shebang from the perspective of an eagle, with clarity too.

What does inner balance mean to you? This is a question that was posed by The Joining Gathering, (http://www.thejoining.com.au/), on Facebook yesterday, and it got me thinking about how I find balance in myself. My Beloved has gone off to the big smoke for four days of intense study and so I found myself looking inside for what it is that keeps me centred, particularly when I am on my own. Time alone is quite rare these days and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but in the past it has often been my preference to be on my own rather than hanging out with other people.

Now I just want to be with my Beloved ALL the time and that’s wonderful but life being what it is there will be times that we have to be apart and I need to be ok with that. And I am, the question is what is going on inside me to create that sense of being grounded in who I am. When I tune into that I get a sense of a column going up the middle of my body, in particular my torso and the place where I feel it the most is in my heart. There is a sense of fullness in the heart space and the feeling is gratitude.

I learned to be happy about who I am and truly love myself before I was able to be with my Beloved in deep love and connection. I decided to settle for nothing less than a relationship based on spiritual practices and I waited 10 years until the moment of our joining unfolded. Just as it was always meant to be, and in the time of my preparation I’ve done a lot of inner discovery that stands me in good stead for the path that my Beloved and I will walk together, side by side.

Anima Animus by Toni Carmine Salerno

Liking me means that while I miss my darling terribly on those rare occasions he has to be away, I really genuinely am ok. Having said that I must confess to a saucy exchange of texts with my Love as I try to finish writing this post! Hard not to be happy when someone regularly takes your breath away and squeezes your heart in that soft goofy way, even when he isn’t physically here.

Life has been a little bit crazy what with being between two house sits for almost three weeks, ending in the moving haze I referred to in an earlier post and arriving in a house full of Celtic musicians. Then a couple of days at the Enchanted Gathering with lots of magic, frequencies and dancing, freezing cold and fires burning as the Wizard and the Rainbow Man kept crying, “More wood, more wood!”.

The Enchanted Gathering.

So it’s been very busy and quite intense and my Beloved and I have been enjoying the chance to slow down and begin to get to know our new environment which we now have all to ourselves. I’ve also started reading a new Diana Richardson book, “Slow Sex”, if you’ve read my posts before you might remember me talking about her book “Tantric Orgasm For Women”. I’ve read the introduction and the first chapter and already I’m feeling very inspired, and not just about sex either, the principles she is talking about can be applied to everything that we do.

In fact her inspiration to write the book came from another writer called Marc David who wrote “The Slow Down Diet”, he is a nutritionist and expert on the psychology of eating. He talks about eight qualities that are an integral part of how we are nourished when we eat and it is less about what we eat and more about the way in which we do it. Awareness and relaxation are two of these qualities and you will hear a lot about these in any book on tantric sex worth it’s salt.

When you slow down there is an entire world of sights and flavours and smells to savour, and if you can actually relax you offer your body the opportunity to respond to all of this treasure. Most of the time we have ideas about things, whether it be food or sex, that we try to force upon the body. Then when our experience is less than satisfactory we think that there must be something wrong with us, if we can create that ‘perfect’ body somehow it will all made right.

It is so important to nourish ourselves on all levels of our being, bring the sacred into everything that you do and you are well on the way to true fulfillment on a soul level. And remember that life was meant to be fun!